LIKE SIBERIA WITH BETTER WEATHER

Whenever I head to Marin for work it's with the grim awareness that lunch will be miserable. Contrasted with my days off on the edges of Chinatown. Chinatown is the warm embrace of a community of people who like to eat and know food. Whereas Marin is the distasteful touch of unfriendly folks who don't appreciate or know food and have grown pudgily complacent eating tasteless muck. The nearest edibles available at work are fast food places and a corner store that happily sells moldy stuff and then acts baffled if you complain.
Driving distance is pizza, fake Chinese, and one decent Mexican.
One. Closed on Sunday.

Now, you could argue "why don't you bring your own?" Which is valid, but the reaction from coworkers and others was minor distaste and curiosity how I could eat that stuff. That being rice with bittermelon and pork (涼瓜豬肉飯 'leung gwaa chü yiuk faan'), or long beans plus chilies and fish (sambal goreng katjang pandjang), or fried rice stick noodles with fatty pork and stalky mustard plus chilipaste. And once a Vietnamese sandwich.

"Why don't you bring your own?"

Please tell me how I could shlep this over there.
This being the item below.

That is chicken and Chinese sausage claypot rice. Chili paste on the side, not pictured. Pour soy sauce down the sides to sizzle. A veritable feast. Which convenience store pizza is not.

Most people in Marin wouldn't know a claypot (煲仔 'pou jai') if it came up and bit them.


Fortunately, this Saturday I'm working with burrito man. So lunch will be excellent. With a little luck the rightwing morons in the backroom will have sputtered so much on Friday that only one or two of them will be there at that time, and I won't have to listen to a tidal wave of vituperation about liberals or a 1812 Overture of ignorance.

Actually it's not even that good. Think instead of the music for Jaws, or a cataclysmic torrent flooding the canyons after a surprise downpour. A storm in the ocean, with tentacled beasts crashing around and ships sinking.


The place with the most extensive selection of claypot rice is in the part of Chinatown where tourist never go. Small, gemütlich, and rather unassuming looking from the street.
They even have frog and yellow eel (monopterus albus, 黃鱔 'wong sin').
It's an entire world away from Marin.


Lunch today will be good.



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